125 Newbury Brings Arne Glimcher Back to His Roots

Arne Glimcher was all of twenty-two years old when he first opened the doors to the original Pace Gallery in 1960 in Boston with his wife and his mother. Over six decades later, his creation is an international powerhouse, with locations in eight cities spanning three continents and a roster filled with many of the most important artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. With his son Marc now serving as president, Glimcher has returned to his roots with an expansive space in Manhattan's burgeoning gallery district in Tribeca, named after the address where he first set up shop all those years ago.

125 Newbury, which opened in September with the group exhibition "Wild Strawberries," can be seen in some ways as the culmination of a career spent shaping the global art scene for over half a century. After overseeing the business of Pace Gallery for so long, Glimcher is returning to his true passion: working closely with art and the artists themselves. "125 Newbury is about expanding my own story at the same time, about going full circle," he said earlier this year, "back to the little gallery I once had, back to being hands-on in every facet of making shows and working with artists and connecting with the public, which is the part of it that I really love."

"Wild Strawberries" makes a fitting opening statement, featuring the work of seventeen artists in a variety of mediums created from the fifties to this year. Housed in a landmark building newly renovated by Bonetti/Kozerski Architecture, the show offers what could be seen as an overview of Glimcher's decades at the forefront of a tumultuous international art scene, inspired by the "dreamlike exchange between threat and seduction" seen in Ingmar Bergman's titular 1957 film, as described in the inaugural Newbury Free Press, which the gallery will be publishing quarterly in place of exhibition catalogs. With plans for five shows a year dedicated to showcasing emerging and underappreciated artists, 125 Newbury makes its mark with a reminder that even as today's tumultuous art market is increasingly driven by market forces, it is still at its heart a labor of love.

"Wild Strawberries" is on view through November 19 at 125 Newbury, 395 Broadway, New York. Read this story and many more in print by preordering our fifth issue here.

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